A grounded butterfly
on the mossy brick floor,--
A flickering, flapping life
completing its last worldly chore,
A sad sight,
so many others flutter with delight,
suckling flowery smiles and nectar sweet,
Aha, life on full feisty treat,
And the sad, sick dying butterfly
with its wings shut tight,
jutted, sticking like one wing,
The air gone with the space between them,
A closing, a conclusion,
a finish to the chapter,
a final drop of anchor,
Just life enough to hold them tight and straight,
and a little movement of legs
to convince the gathering ants
that it’s something alive,
imploring them to respect
the death bed’s sad sanctity.
A silent, slow parting from the world
in a rain-soaked mossy corner
in this big world full of
big-time meetings, unions and laughter,
She is deathbed, grave, cremation
right there in the centre of
throbbing life, raucous laughter and living.
Life still holding
like the vertical sail of a lost boat,
The ants sensing the death
which is their food,
But it has enough kick in its legs
to shake them off and move
for a little jog of life,
another tiny sip of survival.
The day progresses,
Time crawls slowly,
There is now a tilt in its
vertical lime-green sails,
With a slanted sail it moves,--
Brave butterfly,
If you can’t fly,
you should crawl,
Moving with shut-down slanted wings
is also the hallmark of life,
It shows that once you flew high,
The yard is now
an unknown grounded reality,
One more tiny step,
One more little sip of life.
It needs a flowery coffin, I think,
I hold the shut down wings
to take it to a cozy flowery corner
where it can die in peace,
But there is enough force in its wings
to give a tangible pull
to the fingers of a pitying poet,
It flutters to the core of its life reserves,
It denies the captivity even
in its last moments,
As I try to put it among the petals
of a lovely flower in a safe corner,
It denies the possibility of make-believe comfort,
It’s brave; it loves its freedom,
It’s even wiser than me,
Shakes to deny my denial of death,
It flaps vigorously, as if shouting,
‘Let me be open and honest with my death
on the same old open, raw stage of life!’
It’s no longer interested in flowers,
It has dropped its cravings for petals and nectar,
That was then, and now is now,
With marvelous detachment
it uses her last ounce of strength,
swings and swirls and flops out of
the rosy bed I prepared,
‘Flowers are for life;
ground is for death!’ it seems to shout,
She makes this bold statement
with the last air in her wings,
almost gets airborne again
but lands on ground after
a few feet of painful, struggling flight,
It lands on the eternal bed of eternal sleep,--
mother earth,
It looks at me with a rebuke,
‘What do flowers matter now?
They were for the time when there
was air and desire in the wings!’
And there she stands on the ground again,
strong, defiant, her sails vertical again,
The antennae on alert
like a lacerated soldier still holding his sword
to parry off the last strokes of enemy swords,
Her legs dancing to accidental
bumps of the rushing ants,
Tightly holding the fort of life,
Seems to tell me,
‘Give as much as you can,
as long as it’s possible!’
She faces the end with dignity,
with calm deliberation,
with full alertness,
using all that is still left to her
to defend her identity of a butterfly,
And she does that with honor,
If not with flying colors
but with brave, straight sail
for almost four hours,
Then the vertical sail tipped over,
Her little ounce of consciousness
sought a way out,
The closed wings opened
Like the fists opening to open palms
of a human dying and turning to a corpse,
She welcomed the skies
with open wings
and flew to subtler dimensions.
She is now a toy for the wind to play with
and food for the ants to enjoy,
Her colorful corpse flutters
and is dragged playfully by the wind,
The ants pursue the lemon-green food,
Its wings chipped like a a cake getting cut,
Happy ants carry home the mementos of victory.
The butterfly is now air, sun, wind, sky
and water, fire, earth in the ants,
The little show of death on the ground,
The show of life in full abloom
among crimson clusters of peregrina flowers,
The corpse disintegrates on the ground,
While her sisters dance on the petals,
They suck nectar from flowers’ lips,
They flutter and play among leaves,
Dozens of them giving the best
a butterfly can give
in beauty, smiles, nectar and pollination,
Then silently one of them
comes aground like this one,
Floats like a dry, dead leaf
and gently touches the ground for eternal rest,
The show of many lives and smiles
and some deaths and tears,
Among happy flowers, waving leaves, floating clouds,
All under the eternal muse of that
who lives and dies side by side.
